


Manipulating Events

by Tarlan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e07 Common Ground, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-01
Updated: 2009-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:26:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being sucked almost dry by a wraith should never be considered lucky--unless you are John Sheppard. Tag to Common Ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manipulating Events

**Author's Note:**

> Tag to Common Ground. For **sg_prompts** #29 Luck.

As far as Rodney was concerned, luck was for those who didn't have the skills necessary to manipulate events in their favor. For that reason alone he knew John was not some simpleton because the man couldn't have been more lucky if he had patented the concept, which was both impossible and unnatural. Therefore he had to be a master at manipulating events. No matter what they faced John always managed to scrape through with just a couple more gray hairs to note his survival from yet another life-threatening situation.

Or not as the case might be.

Rodney stared at the fractionally more youthful appearance of a man he'd seen on a grainy video feed being drained by a wraith only a few hours earlier. John should have been old and brittle, like Abrams and Gaul, but instead he was vibrating with energy as he stood just inside Rodney's room, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as the door slid closed behind him.

Rodney ordered the lights up and stared hard at the handsome face, recalling every line from before and noting the differences between then and now. John gave that little smirk that always drove Rodney crazy, except now it annoyed him for a different reason. There was one laughter line in particular that was definitely smoother than before.

"That's so unfair! He gave you back more than he took!"

John blinked hard, and then his hazel eyes narrowed. "I got lucky."

"Luck?" Rodney was incensed. "Luck is not getting captured by Kolya in the first place. Luck is not being strapped to a chair while they let a wraith feed off you. Luck is--"

He hadn't noticed his voice rising towards hysteria until it started to break. Neither had he noticed John moving towards him with his eyes darkening in concern but there he was, right in Rodney's personal space with his hands tightly grasping Rodney's shoulders.

"Luck is not having to watch you die in front of me," he ended in a rough, broken whisper, recalling the way Kolya had laughed as the wraith thrust its feeding hand against John's chest. He'd been unable to take his eyes away as John aged visibly right in front of them, with his dark hair turning gray and wrinkles deepening across his handsome face. Even Ronon had looked away in anger and despair at the time.

When they located John hours later, Rodney had braced himself for the worst, already running scenarios through his mind on how he could convince Elizabeth and the SGC to allow John to stay on Atlantis--if he was even still alive. He'd mentally reworked his busy lab schedule and written his resignation from the off-world team so that he could spend all his free time looking after John. If he could not persuade them, even with threats and blackmail, then he'd planned to resign and return to Earth with John. By the time they reached the clearing he'd built entire future worlds centered around each possible scenario, and yet with all those thoughts writhing in his head, he'd never once anticipated finding John looking younger than before rather than much, much older.

John pulled him in close and held him tight, pressing small kisses against his temple and hair.

"I was going to resign for you if they wouldn't let you stay. Go back to Earth and buy a small place on the beach... Take care of you."

The only reaction to Rodney's quiet words was the tightening of those arms around him, and Rodney sagged against John, letting the tension and fear of the last few days drop away. He didn't realize John was maneuvering them towards the bed until his knees hit the edge of the mattress and he dropped down. For once, Rodney had nothing more to say, too drained to speak as if it was him rather than John who had been fed upon by the wraith. He managed a token protest as John stripped him, grumbling tiredly as he was nudged beneath the covers. The hairs on John's chest tickled Rodney's back as John wrapped his warm body around him.

As the exhaustion of the last few days pulled him down into desperately needed sleep, Rodney heard John whisper, "I'll take a rain check on the beach house till we both grow old and gray together."

Surfacing for a moment, Rodney grouched back. "You'd better."

He still didn't believe so much in luck but perhaps with his brains and John's charms they'd be able to manipulate events sufficiently to have that future.

END


End file.
